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Leader: Something fishy here

Movie villains are fine, but who do they frighten? Ernst Stavro Blofeld might have looked scary, opting for a shaven head before they were fashionable, but he spoilt it all with that fluffy white cat. Dr Evil, Blofeld’s comic doppelgänger in the Austin Powers movies, was probably more convincing. Even good actors have trouble conveying the appropriate degree of menace. So we have to look to real life for genuine Dr Evils and who better than Nicholas van Hoogstraten, alias the “devil’s landlord”, serving 10 years for manslaughter in Belmarsh prison. Lesser villains might have been happy to take a job in the library, or follow Lord Archer in writing a book about dodging the attentions of fellow inmates in the showers, but not Hoogstraten. He is planning his next money- making scheme from behind bars. Think of a combination of the Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns, Al Capone and Mr Bridger,